Three days after dropping the 1st atomic bomb on Hiroshima we dropped a 2nd on Nagasaki, the center of Japanese Catholicism. It has been 75 years since the last nuclear attack on a city on Aug 9 1945. Yet in terms of moral evolution we have not used those years wisely.
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Our nuclear arsenals are vast—6000 warheads each in the US and Russia, mostly 100-1000 x more powerful than “Fat Man,” the 21K plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki—tho now we know that smoke in the stratosphere from even dozens of bombs could induce “nuclear winter.”
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Land-based strategic missles remain on “hair-trigger” alert ready to be launched—though nuclear winter means there is no advantage to one side that launches first. We are pointing a gun at our own heads. The Catholic Church has condemned the use of such weapons as a crime against
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“God and humanity.” Is it permitted to threaten what it is immoral to do? The bishops longed hedged on this, as long as serious efforts were made to abolish such weapons. Pope Francis has now said possession of such weapons is itself immoral. Such hellish “weapons” are
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incompatible with the long-term survival of our species. The number of nuclear survivors in Japan—the hibakusha—is steadily declining. But their witness and their cry must be joined by all of us heretofore survivors of the nuclear era: No more Hiroshimas! no more Nagasakis!
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